Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-14-Speech-2-380"
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"en.20060314.29.2-380"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank my colleague, Mr Grech, for the clarity and rigour of his report, which is both comprehensive and pragmatic. The paragraphs dedicated to our institution – the only democratically elected representation of the people of the EU, in the words of Mr Grech himself – captured my full attention, particularly those relating to visits to Parliament.
The recent debates on the Constitutional Treaty and the outcome of the referendum in my country, which I personally deplored, highlight the fact that too many of our fellow citizens are unaware of the meaning and importance of the European Union for their everyday lives. Fears and received ideas often take the place of information. From my brief experience as a new MEP, I have also learnt that, each time that I have had the opportunity to receive visitors – in Brussels or in Strasbourg – no matter what their age, their origin or their socio-professional background, they have returned home convinced, I hope, of the value of the European Union or, at any rate, better informed about it and still interested in it. Of that I am sure.
One well-known rule of marketing says that a dissatisfied customer tells eleven people and that a satisfied person only tells four people. So let us increase the number of satisfied citizens, because if they are better informed, they are in a better position to spread the European idea among our nations. Yet in order to do that, we must act on the Grech report and increase the number of visitors per MEP. I support Mr Grech’s request. Recently, the European Parliament’s information office for France organised a fascinating European forum in my constituency on the theme ‘A Dialogue on Europe: bringing the European Union and the citizen closer together’. Many participants regretted that the number of sponsored visits to Parliament was not higher. This is a genuine request.
I have one more point to make: as far as welcoming our visitors and organising our work are concerned, our assistants have an invaluable role to play. They share our lives as elected representatives and freely make their time and brainpower available to us, but wide disparities exist among them, and their social situation is often precarious. As Mr Grech points out in his report, they truly deserve finally to be granted a genuine and meaningful statute."@en1
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